


The City Goes On Forever

by AstoriaColumnStaircase



Category: Not Another D&D Podcast (Podcast)
Genre: Theology, extrovert adopts an introvert, ghost story, minor gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-02
Updated: 2020-12-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:14:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27844309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstoriaColumnStaircase/pseuds/AstoriaColumnStaircase
Summary: A young Fia Boginya follows Irena into the forest and gets her first taste for magic.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 13





	The City Goes On Forever

**Author's Note:**

> I couldn't stop thinking about Fia having a best friend who helped awaken Bukvar and the implications surrounding Fia's father wearing the silver scales of The Reaper, and yes this is some heavy projection, but all that thinking evolved into a ghost story. And a little bit, as someone with -1 charisma, it came from the experience of being adopted by a friend. Thanks for reading.

Fia was not supposed to talk to the strange girl who haunted the woods. Odd things came from there. Almost human things, sent by the Trickster to befuddle the faithful and turn them from the path. But the girl spoke to her first. 

Nobody talked to Fia. She ate lunch alone at the edge of the schoolyard, far from the shelter of the gray stone and rough timber schoolhouse, where the other kids had to make a journey if they wished to tease her. Teacher's pet, know-it-all, weirdo... the strange girl from the woods with the silvery hair did not call her any of those things when she flagged for Fia's attention. She beckoned to her and asked in an exhilarated whisper if Fia would like to see something interesting.

Her father told her not to speak to the odd girl. She was foreign, and her parents taught her heresies in their own home rather than sending her to the village school. 

Speaking was forbidden, but it was impolite not to respond when spoken to directly. The rules for speaking and not speaking were incompatible, and more importantly the girl had offered something interesting which was all Fia ever wanted. 

Fia nodded. It was the best compromise given the circumstances. 

"Can you talk?" asked the girl with the silver hair.

"I can," said Fia, her voice low to keep it from carrying. Mornings in the village already carried the scent of snow, and sounds were sharper in the cold.

"What's your name?" asked the girl. She was rummaging through a burlap sack, shuffling clinking things around mounds of dirty fabric and greasy wrappers. Aside from the silvery hair and pointed ears, the girl looked on the grubby side of ordinary; a threadbare grey sweater nearly translucent at the cuffs, dark skirts stiff with mud along their hems, shoes more rag than leather. Fia did not think that a fairy would dress that way when tricking a good person out of their name, but she had never met one before. 

"I'm Irena," said the girl, breaking the first rule of fairies, and insuring that as odd as she was, she could not be a creation of the Trickster.

"Fia," said Fia as Irena landed on what she was seeking and pulled out a small glass jar that glowed with a warm orange light. Fia gasped and put herself between the light and the schoolhouse. Sprites were Trickster-made; evil things sent to stray good persons from The Reaper's fair right hand.

"Don't be scared," said Irena. "They're really cute when you can get a good look at them. I hear some of the cities even put up little glass houses at the top of lamp posts and all the streets are lit with sprites!"

"Missus Howard is teaching us about the capitol and she has said nothing of sprite lamps on streets."

"Has Missus Howard ever been to the capitol?"

Fia pursed her lips. She could not imagine Missus Howard leaving the threshold of the schoolhouse for anything less than a rampaging werewolf.

Irena held her jar a little closer and Fia was compelled to lean in for a better look. When her eyes adjusted to the cheerful glow, she could see the shape of a tiny person, stretched and thin, with long curled ears and a miniature grin. It did not look evil. It didn't even look angry to be in a jar. The tiny creature pressed its hands upside down to frame its eyes and waggled its tongue at her. Fia couldn't help but laugh.

"I like your fangs, Fia," said Irena. She held two fingers up from her jaw, thrust out like Fia's most prominent teeth.

Fia blushed deeply and pulled her long black hair forward to hide even more of her face. Her father said it was improper to see differences among the flock when The Reaper is blind to everything but what is in our hearts. To admire differences reeked of Trickster influence. Yet there was much to admire in Irena. 

"I like your ears," whispered Fia, with her hands cupped around her own to mimic the points of Irena's ears.

An iron bell clanged across the schoolyard, and Irena pressed the jar into Fia's hands.

"Take it!"

Fia shook her head, placed the jar at her feet, and ran back to the schoolhouse. They were halfway into maths when she found the courage to look out the window, and by then her friend was gone.

A friend. The secret warmed her through the cold evening and colder lessons with father.

#

The other children laughed at her for wearing two sets of mittens on her way to school the next morning. They called her a weakling, a baby, what kind of mountain born girl couldn't handle the bite of autumn? 

Fia was prepared to endure their ire until lunch time and another glimpse of Irena, but she did not have to endure that long. The silver haired girl stalked out of the hedges like a wild bear and the taunting children scattered down the street. Fia was an oddity, but the foreign girl from the woods was more animal than human, and they would not risk her nearness. 

Fia stood a little straighter and searched for the words she had practiced that morning, but Irena was quicker to speak and broke the spell.

"Do you want to see my palace?"

"I do," said Fia.

Irena drew a regal pose and gestured toward the forest. "Come with me."

"I have school," said Fia. She had intended to ask Missus Howard about sprite lamps.

Irena grinned. "I thought you might say that." She pulled a bunch of tree bark still wet with snowmelt out of the pocket of her skirt and picked a few choice pieces to give to Fia. "Chew on this the rest of the way, and it'll make you vomit all over the teacher's desk. She'll send you home, and then you can spend the rest of the day with me."

"I'll be sick," said Fia.

"You'll feel better as soon as you puke, but nobody else has to know."

It was not actually lying if Fia was truly sick up until the moment she was told to go home. An important distinction and she was grateful that Irena had considered it. Fia took the bark and chomped down hard on it. Bile rose up immediately.  
"You don't have to chew it that hard!" said Irena.

"It works really good," said Fia, and dashed the rest of the way. It only took the polite expulsion of her breakfast into the waste bin for Missus Howard to send Fia home with a second scarf wound tight around her shoulders. 

Irena met Fia around the building bouncing on her heels.

"Did you hit the desk? I would've aimed for that loud blond kid with the blue hat, he seems like a dick."

"Cyril is a dick," affirmed Fia. "But I didn't want to make a scene."

Irena laughed and tugged at Fia's arm, dragging her near the forest. "You're so considerate! Come with me, when we get to my palace I will knight you for your chivalry!"

They crossed over the edge of the schoolyard, then a few paces beyond, but the trees were thicker once they left the village, and the sky was obscured. "The forest is filled with horrors," warned Fia. She dug her heels and the heavy tread of her boots stopped Irena from pulling further. 

Father said the horrors would punish young girls for disobeying. And if they did not snatch you, vile tricksome fairies would turn your heart evil and keep you from ever joining the Eldergod in Reverie. Fia got so many things wrong already; she did not want to have an evil heart.

"It's not reaping season," said Irena. "And horrors don't come out in the day, anyway."

"I'm not supposed to leave the village."

"Technically we're not leaving. The forest used to be city, same with the schoolhouse, and the greengrocer's, probably your house, too, if it's got a wall made of stone!" Irena scuffed her ragged shoe at the ground but found little purchase, so she bent and scrabbled with it with bare fingers. Her skin turned pink with cold, then white, and Fia bent to help her, but as she reached down Irena pulled away. 

There were cobblestones at the bottom of the hole she dug. They laid in the same pattern as the roads in town. The trees overhanging them looked suddenly familiar; juniper lined the streets of the village, but these were so much larger than anything in town was permitted to grow. 

"There's old houses all through the forest here. Most are toppled over with trees growing out the roofs, but my palace is still standing."

Fia tracked the cobblestone underneath the soil to the line of juniper trees. She judged the distance, took three paces back, then removed her mittens as she pulled up handfuls of dirt and leaves to reveal a crumbling curb. "Father says I must stay on the sidewalk when we walk through the village." It was not disobeying if she could follow enough rules.  
"Well, then we will be very good and do what your father says," said Irena.

Fia pulled on her mittens, and remembered the reason for her second pair. "Your hands looked cold," she said as she presented the mittens. 

They were an old pair, the fabric bunched between the thumbs from too many unshapely repairs, but they would not be missed. She wished to give Irena the new black mittens her father bought; for all the fine stitching and subtle scale pattern knit into the back of the hand, they were not as comforting as the older pair that she had darned again and again. But the new mittens were another sign of her father's devotion. She was half certain he checked her hands before her face when she got home.

Fia doffed the second scarf Missus Howard sent her with and gave it, but Irena refused.

"Give me the black one. That red looks nice on you."

Fia bit down a smile as she obediently gave Irena her black scarf. "I will need the scarf back. The red isn't mine."

Irena wrapped the black around her head and neck and threw the rest down her back, then stood on her toes and glowered. "Now we are twins."

"I do not look like that," said Fia, fully glowering. Irena only laughed and hurried further into the forest. 

A sprite floated over Irena's shoulder, and then another. The trees overhead closed their canopies and turned the noonday sun to night. Moss hung from low branches like funeral drapery, but in spite of the shade it seemed the forest held her in a warm embrace. The fog of her breath diminished among all closeness and organic decay. Crumbling buildings marked the edge of streets every so often, but most had melted into a part of the forest. Tree roots climbed over brackish fountains, lichen reclaimed concrete foundations, and the overbearing force of humanity was dimmer here. It was a quiet place, its sanctity broken only by the laughter of her new friend. 

Irena paused at a statue of a faceless person stuck to their knees in the forest floor. She bowed reverently to it, then turned over a few rocks stacked around the statues skirts. She uncovered a small ring of mushrooms glowed with an enchanting light, greener than envy and just as wicked. Irena plucked a glowing cap from the ground and tucked it into a corner of handkerchief that could do with a good pressing. 

"What is that?" asked Fia as the kerchief disappeared into Irena's pocket.

"My mom lets me learn on my own so long as I bring one thing back to analyze," said Irena.

It did not account for Irena's action at the statue, nor her quick work with the rocks. Fia had the strange feeling that Irena had lied to her, but she could not understand why. She must have done something to warrant mistrust, and to keep from further offending her only friend, she decided to say nothing.

The palace was not much further, and it was not much of a palace. Missus Howard had said that the High Queen's palace was the size of their whole village, all indoors, with a whole village worth of people to staff it. 

Irena ran up the marble steps, her path already kicked clean of the moss and leaves that gathered in the crevices of the carved stone banisters. She turned and spread her arms wide. "My Palace. I told you it was still standing."

It might not be the size of a village, but the white stone and many-windowed manor was still bigger than the mayor's house. It rose from the forest floor as though it grew there, and an entire column had fallen over and been replaced with a tree that grew up to hold the second story balcony from crashing to the ground. Vines and trees buttressed the walls, and broken windows were covered in curtains of moss. At one end of the manor, there was an entire room made of glass with a tree growing out of the center. At the other, the second story was black with soot, and the roof had burned away. The trees there leaned into the manor and knit their branches through the second story to build a living roof. As a palace it was small, but it also seemed alive, which made it the most incredible palace Fia had ever seen. 

Irena pressed both hands on the carved wooden doors and they swung into a cavernous black space. The sprites that danced over her head flittered inside to cast the interior in a warm and fiery glow. One sprite did not follow. It took a single spin around Irena, then buzzed down the steps to hover in front of Fia. It stretched out its tiny hands, then cupped them near, begging her to follow.

"It likes you!"

Fia peered down at the tiny creature. It twisted its hands around its eyes and waggled its tongue again. 

"Do I know you?" she asked in a whisper to keep from disturbing its gossamer wings with the weight of her breath.

It nodded. The sprite from yesterday still happily followed Irena through the woods in spite of yesterday's glass prison. The sprite looped around Fia's head and flitted up the stairs. Fia followed closely, crossed the threshold into the darkened manor, and walked directly into a spiderweb. She blinked and picked the web from her face.

"I thought you had been inside before."

"The spiders work quickly," said Irena.

Fia found the culprit crawling on her sweater and gently placed it on an entry table that seemed to be sprouting fungus from its legs. When she looked up, Irena was watching her with an unreadable expression.

"I have done something wrong?"

The expression cracked into a smile, and Irena shook her head. "You are amazingly brave, Fia."

Fia's mouth twitched. It was braver for the spider to crawl into the hand of a giant than it was for her to show it kindness. But the approval felt nice. She let the smile blossom. "Thank you."

"There's a library upstairs."

"This whole time we have been walking toward a library?! You should have lead with that!"

The stairs were easy to find in the dim light, and Fia sprinted up them. She stumbled once on the landing, where the floor boards had rotted, but momentum carried her further upward. "Careful on the landing!" she called behind her, trusting Irena to chase after. 

Irena took a more careful route, one she'd established through previous exploration, and made it to the second floor without breaking anything. 

The second floor was smaller than the first, and the library easily found in the west wing. Fia was already at the door; it swung loose on broken hinges and the wood was streaked in soot. Every wall of the small library held shelves for books, but half was burned and the rest sodden from the living roof above. Branches grew over the bookshelves as if they were arms bent down to protect something precious. 

Fia could not mourn the damaged books, because something cracked in the corner.

It sounded like wood hitting wood, like a switch tested for its strength against a door frame, and then she saw the figure bent over the desk in the gloom. Man shaped, tall, black coat, and Fia was rooted in fear. Irena pulled at her arm, said something about the sprites, their color, but Fia could not hear her. The man moaned and stood from his desk.

"Noooo, I have to save them!" he cried. He turned and something was wrong with his face; ash streaked and broiled skin, his lips were burned away. He lurched into the center of the room where the faintest wisp of sunlight could touch him and his image softened like a window covered in frost. He was a ghost. "Her letters! There all I have left!"

Irena was gone, but Fia stayed to watch him. Incorporeal fire danced around the desk he'd come from, it raced up the walls and Fia could track its pattern from the damage it had made of this room. How long ago? Long enough for a forest to grow around him. The ghost raced around his library, refusing to leave. He called for his Clarissa, the letters she wrote him, all he had left of her after she was conscripted into... something. The wailing was hard to decipher, but it was clear he had died trying to save her memory. And now he was trapped, reliving the minutes that lead to his death.

Irena shouted for her, then crept a little ways up the stairs and shouted again. "That's a horror, Fia! It'll kill you!"

"He can't see us," said Fia. She waved at the ghost who ran almost through her to rifle through spectral bookcases. His passing chilled the air. "He's really sad." She dropped her book bag and pulled out her spelling book. There were empty pages in the back, Missus Howard said for practice, but this was more important. She folded a page and tore it as carefully along the binding, apologizing in her heart for hurting the little book. "How do you write a love letter?"

The ghost was wailing louder now as the flames consumed him. Fire licked the bookcases, creeping closer to Fia, and the memory of a fire brigade charged around her to douse the flames, but the ghost was on his last breath when the figures reached him. The memory vanished, then began again with a bang.

Irena stood on tiptoes at the top of the stairs. "A love letter?"

Fia nodded, holding out the pen and paper helplessly. "He needs some nice words from someone called Clarissa, but I don't know how to write a love letter."

Irena hugged the walls as she moved closer, then took the paper. "I can do that. What's his name?"

The fire brigade had been shouting as they ascended the stairs. "Mister Wulfsburg. Bruno."

"Dear Bruno..." muttered Irena, but she kept the rest of her etchings silent. 

Fia watched wordlessly as Bruno went through his final minutes again. 

Irena handed her the letter as the sequences restarted. "It's your idea. You give it to him."

"He can't see me."

Irena took the glowing mushroom from her pocket. "I'll make him see you." She plucked a bit of fluff from the end of her sleeve and mashed it against the mushroom, then spread the mixture against all her fingertips. Strings of light grew from her fingers in a cat's cradle, then she looped it larger and larger. The light dimmed and took on new colors, the black and silver of a postman's uniform, and Irena draped it over Fia like a sheet. 

The ghost startled out of his memory. "Johnny? Is that a new uniform?"

"He'll see what makes sense to him," whispered Irena.

The flames on the wall dimmed, and his face knit itself together. "It looks pretty snazzy, but the post's not due until tomorrow."

"S-special delivery," stammered Fia as she held the letter out.

The ghost hovered near. He took the letter and his fingertips brushed her hand and stole the last bit of heat her mittens had retained, but it did not hurt, and the ghost flinched just as much. 

He laughed. "That static is really something, my boy!" He opened the letter, just a bit of paper torn from a book, folded thrice, but to him it seemed real. He read, tears gathered in his eyes, and the letter fell through his fingers to land inert on the floor. "She's right. Thank you."

He vanished, and the fire went out of the room. 

"You dispelled a ghost," whispered Irena.

"You did! What did you write? And that--" she waved her hands over the image of the uniform, already fading as the ghost left the room. "That was magic!"

Irena's eyes widened and her mouth went very thin. "You can't tell anyone. Promise me you won't tell your father."

"I would never." Fia hugged her arms tight to keep from collapsing over the weight of the secret. "Can you teach me? I won't tell anyone, even if you don't teach me, I'll keep it a secret, but I want to learn. Please."

Irena hugged her, and pulled away when the taller girl went rigid under her arms. "Sorry! Sorry, I'm just so excited! I only know the one spell, but I found this book and maybe we could learn more together?" Irena fumbled with the rucksack and pulled out a moldy volume stamped with the smiling face of the Trickster. "It was the only book here that wasn't completely waterlogged."

"Do you think it was fated?" The Reaper worked in fates. All went to him, eventually. But the forest, the sprites, the statue with its glowing mushrooms, all seemed to be the work of a different god.

"Probably," said Irena, shrugging. She did not seem so interested in fates. Perhaps Irena made her own.

Fia picked up the letter before she followed Irena down the stairs. 

Dear Bruno,  
All my letters, everything I said, was all to say I love you. I won't see you again in this life, but perhaps we will meet in the next. I will wait for you in Reverie.  
Yours forever,  
Clarissa.

"Where did you learn to write love letters?" asked Fia. The spites had fled the manor, and their absence left the place cold and dim. Fia shivered as she crossed the steps down to the forest floor.

"Did you like it? I stole it from a Sinbad romance. Mom lets me read them when she's finished and they are very raunchy."  
Fia nodded solemnly. "I don't know what that means, but I am willing to learn." 

Irena giggled. "Maybe we should focus on magic first."

Fia smiled. "I would like that." She held out her hand and miraculously Irena grasped it as naturally as moss grows in a forest. Irena's hand was warm through the old mitten, and it gave back a little heat that Fia lost to the ghost. "Thank you for being my friend."


End file.
